the bars below zero represent years when the deficit grew. these bars above zero represent years when the deficit shrunk. we're here right now in the deficit shrunk portion of the chart. the point of the shrinking on the whole chart back to 1950. when somebody stops inevitably matering about the fiscal cliff and the sky rocketing deficit, they don't know what they're talking about and they probably don't know it is wrong but you can help with visual aids. we have posted both of those charts we just showed you on our blog and you can load them on your smartphone or ipad to pass around the table and print them out on paper in case your uncle doesn't look liking at these new things. those are waiting for you now. we are here for you. you can do this. report back and let us know how it went. that does it for us tonight. have a great thanksgiving. we'll see you monday. now it is time for the last word with lawrence o'donnell guest hosted by the spectacular ezra kline. good evening. >> good evening, rachel. i am glad to know other people

bring charts to thanksgiving dinner. >> we're preparing them so america can do that. awesome. thanks. >> have a great thanksgiving. >> you, too. you know what i am thankful for this thanksgiving? i am thankful elections, they have consequences. >> the time for bickering is over. the time for games has passed. now is the time to deliver on health care. >> have you read the bill? hell, no, you haven't. >> the supreme court has upheld president obama's health care law. >> the health care law. >> the signature achievement of barack obama's presidency. >> now they're trying to drag it into the negotiations over the fiscal cliff. >> we have a new message from congressman boehner. >> we can't afford it, we can't afford it and we can't afford to leave it in tact. that's not a new message. >> can you say it was done openly? >> that is not a new message. >> they have been defeated three times. >> we had an election. >> the american people have spoken. >> elections have consequences. >> we're not going to change

anybody's mind. >> they need to move on. >> we had an election and they lost. >> i want to thank everyone who participated in this election. >> the presidential pardon. >> the winning turkey can thank his stellar campaign team. >> turkey pardon at the white house. >> these birds are moving forward. >> a very happy thanksgiving. >> a very happy thanksgiving. >> happy thanksgiving. >> and happy thanksgiving. presidential campaigns, they usually focus on, well, you might say hope and change. the candidates promise big grand new policies and how everything will be different and they get elected and go to congress and congress usually says no. this time, though, this time is different. candidate obama in 2008 promised universal health care. shockingly, unlike the many, many presidents who had run for office and been elected promising that before him, president obama was pretty much able to get it passed into law.

though the affordable care act became law in 2010, it wasn't scheduled to actually begin until 2014. and that right there, that is the single most important fact about the election we have just been through. you may have heard that elections have consequences. this election had real completely life changing consequences for the 30 million uninsured people and maybe millions more who will get health care coverage because president obama is re-elected and that means the affordable care act will take effect. that is not just change you can believe in or change you can hope for. it is change that is actually happening. it is happening even as we speak right now. it doesn't need another vote in congress or to clear another challenge before the supreme court. it is law and even john boehner knows it. >> you had said next year that you would repeal the health care vote. that still your mission? >> i think the election changes that. it is pretty clear that the

president was re-elected and obama care is the law of the land. >> that was boehner less than two weeks ago. it was pretty clear that mission repeal obama care had failed. the voters had spoken and obama care as speaker boehner said is the law of the land. republicans weren't super happy about that message. they thought boehner was getting a little squishy, giving up a fight. that election we just had. the one where voters re-elected the obama care guy, the one that had obama in his name, that was but a flesh wound. today boehner wrote an op-ed to the cincinnati inquirer which begins with, quote, president obama has won re-election but as was the case before the election, obama care has to go. if you read on in his op-ed, things get a little strange. boehner went on to share the big plan which is, quote, over the past couple of years i have noted there are essentially three major routes to repeal of

the president's law. the courts, the presidential election process and the congressional oversight process. with two of those three routes having come up short, the third and final one becomes more important than ever. vigor us oversight of the health care law by the house can be expected and in fact is already under way. one of these things is not like the other. the courts and the presidential election process, they can actually stop obama care from happening. you get supreme court ruling against it, the president works to repeal it and that can matter. congressional oversight hearings? that is not an accepted avenue for repeal. it is actually a little pathetic. if you think john boehner has any chance of repealing the health care law through vigorous oversight from the house's oversight committees, what have they been doing for the past two years? why isn't it gone now? boehner is a realist. this is not wishful thinking on his part.

it is lazy comforting and it is here, republicans, don't you worry, it is all part of the plan, we're on track, but there is no plan. the country is moving forward. it is moving forward regardless of the house republicans. on tuesday the department of health and human services issued new regulations that explained the health care law in practical terms like what will a deductible actually be able to go up to and can your insurer jack up the price when you hit your 30th birthday or 50th birthday and this one is for you, john boehner. what is the policy for smokers anyway? the answers there just so you know are in order, a deductible can in the cheapest plans be $2,000 or more in some cases. insurers can't hit you with a huge new bill when you hit a new decade. increases due to your age have to be gradual and smokers can be charged 1.5 times as many as non-smokers but not if they enter a program to help them quit smoking. as a nation's near universal

shelt care system is being defined in washington there is a campaign right now to make sure people around the country know about it, understand it and become part of it. if this campaign succeeds, it could make the affordable care act bigger and better than we thought. you have probably heard that the law will cover 30 million people. what you probably don't know is what is behind that guesstimate. roughly 49 people in the united states currently don't have health insurance. the congressional budget office estimates that 30 million of them will gain coverage under the affordable care act. that leaves 19 million uninsured. about 5 million of that 19 million are illegal immigrants not eligible for the law of subsidies. they project another 2 million live in states that will opt out of the medicaid expansion. that leaves 12 million people. the cbo estimates at least 6 million of them are actually going to be eligible for medicaid. they just won't sign up and won't know about it. even more will be eligible for

private insurance. the cbo is in effect assuming a lot of people won't participate in the bill not because it wouldn't help them but because all government programs have a serious non-participation rate. a lot of people don't know about them. a recent poll found that 83% of people likely to qualify for the medicaid expansion in the law are completely unaware. they have no idea they can suddenly get health care. some who do know about it are so beaten down by the current system they don't believe it. "washington post" colleague sara cliff visited a focus group where the uninsured were asked about the health care bill and it was searing. one woman in a genuinely heartbreaking moment of honesty said, quote, if it was doable, by that meaning giving people like her health care, it would have been done by now. i just don't think it is possible. think about that. if you could get to 100% participation or even just near to it, this bill could easily cover 40 million people a full 33% more than we were expecting

and you don't need to pass a new law to get the people on the books. you need to tell people the bill is there and convince them it can help them, and right now a ban of very strange bed fellows teamed up to do just that to run a public education campaign that will get these people the information they need to sign up. the big health care players, insurers and pharmaceutical companies are working with liberal health care advocacy groups to make sure people know about and understand the health care law and what they can get from it. they're going to spend millions of dollars to tell people about the law. the insurers and the drug makers, if they want to do it because more people in the system means more profit for them and the health care advocates because more people being covered means more people with health care coverage and you don't have to go through the dangerous experience of being uninsured and while all of this is happening and hammering out regulations and trying to tell people that are depressed and discouraged that finally at long last we have an answer for them and we can help them, as we're

moving forward and changing health care in this country entirely, the republicans are going to be chasing their tails in oversight hearings pretending they can repeal the bill. come on, guys. the campaign is over. the election is over. it is now time to govern. obama care is the law of the land. it is the law by the way that could have been different had republicans chosen to participate in its construction, chosen to trade their votes for more of a say in the final policy, but they didn't. they made an all-in bet on killing the bill and then an all-in bet on repealing the bill and now both of those bets have gone bad. it is over. health care reform is happening. the only question is whether republicans will choose to be part of it. joining me now is ron paul, the executive director of families usa, a national organization that advocates on behalf of health care consumers and the chairman of the enroll america, the aforementioned strange bed fellows coalition working to bring people into the coverage of the law. ron, it is great to have you here.

>> it is great to be with you again. >> tell me, what are you doing? how are you going to do this and the in under the circumstances and bolts and mechanics of it? how are you going to try to get people signed up? >> enroll america, the task is to make sure as many people know about this as possible, so there will be a huge public education campaign. there will be advertising. and the various groups that are in touch with people who can benefit from this are going to help out. so people go to community health centers because they can get free care. people in the community health centers will have informed people about the possibility they can get health coverage. when you go to a hospital, you can learn that you can get coverage. the hospitals want you covered because they don't want to provide care for you for free. when you go to a pharmacy, the pharmacy can handout information to you about how you get enrolled. what enroll america is going to do is galvanize all of these different folks, people of goodwill, to get people enrolled and as you said, some of these

interest groups, they can do well by doing good and so our hope is that this is going to be a really robust effort. there is going to have to be a really big advertising campaign as well. >> right on that, this is not the first time in this country we have had to try to sign up people for a law like this. it happened in massachusetts and i want to play one of the ads they used to get people signed onto the bill. >> four years after i graduated college i felt a lump in my left breast and i waited a whole year and then i finally got health insurance and i went to my new doctor who said i should get it checked out, and so i did and it was breast cancer. if i didn't have health insurance i might not be around today to tell my story. basically saved my life. >> jackie's story is one example of how important it is for everyone to have health insurance. in massachusetts we're leading the way. the state's health connector has affordable plans, lots to choose from and easy sign up. in massachusetts even if you

lose your job, you can still get coverage. visit the health connector today. >> so that guy you just heard from, tim wakefield, in massachusetts he is a very big deal. he is a member of the red sox and that campaign worked. massachusetts had a very, very high sign up rate. what have you learned from that? what have you learned from what happened in mitt romney's state? >> we have learn add lot in terms of what messages work and actually we're doing a great deal of research now in terms of what kind of ways do we need to communicate to people who should not best communicators and so that there are people who are believable and one of the things that is very important is in addition to providing information either through an advertisement or some other process like that, people want to have personal contact with individuals because some of them want to get help, try to figure

out which plan they should sign up for, make sure they understand what their obligations are going to be, what's going to be covered, what the deductibles are going to be and so in addition to the advertising and using athletes and others, it is going to be very important to have people on the ground who can help people. >> what do you think the president's role is in all of this? obviously he is not directly affiliated with your group. what do you think will be coming out of the public sector and the federal government to try to get people engaged in the bill? >> ezra, you know, this is a legacy for the president. so this has got to be a high priority for this administration. it is our hope that the white house directly will play a significant role. we would love to see the first lady play a significant role. i think she is an eloquent spokesperson and remember we're going to have to really target those groups that are more likely to be uninsured and they happen to be the same people

targeted during the elections, people from communities of color, young adults, so i think the white house can play a very effective role. >> thank you so much for joining me and have a happy thanksgiving. >> you, too, ezra. >> coming up, the science behind the victory, obama's victory and what the administration can do with all of that data. and later why i have come to hate the movie mr. smith goes to washington. and the unusual mystical connection between the 47% and star trek. or that printing in color had to cost a fortune. nobody said an all-in-one had to be bulky. or that you had to print from your desk. at least, nobody said it to us.

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the atlantic tells this story from the final days of the obama campaign, the day of the election and josh thayer, the lead engineer on narwol that underlined the campaign's digital application was going down. service had gone out and they had lost databases in the east coast servers and the memory caches, too. everything was breaking at exactly the wrong time and they had to fix it right that second or everything was lost. they did get it done but it wasn't happening on the day of the election. i sort of lied about that. that was on october 21st, and this was a war game. over the next few weeks the obama campaign's top secret data

group did this over and over and over again, three simulations in which they destroyed everything they had and then they rebuilt it all on the fly. by the end they knew what they would do if the amazon web service went down cold. they could survive that with no down time. they knew what to do, sandy wiped out the entire east coast infrastructure and head a backup that could recon construct it with the touch of a button. this is the seriousness in which they took the data operation and on election day as the romney campaign's orca system, because the orca is the only thing that hunts the narwol, as it went belly up on the beach, the obama came taken system worked. the day after the election the "new york times" reported, quote, the power of this operation stunned mr. romney's aids on election nature as they saw voters they never knew kpaised. it is one thing to say are you

going to do it. it is another thing to get out there and do it, said brian jones, a senior adviser. at the end of the day the obama campaign's get out the vote registered 1.8 million new voters by knocking on doors and registered another 1.1 million through online campaigns including a groundbreaking facebook app that deserves a special word because it genuinely might reshape how campaigns run going forward. michael shearer writes in the final weeks before election day, a scary statistic emerged from the databases at the chicago headquarters. half the campaign's targeted swing state voters under age 29 had no listed phone number. they lived in the cellular shadows effectively immune to traditional get out the vote efforts. this facebook app was the obama campaign's answer to that very, very new problem, the more than 1 million obama backer who is signed up for the app gave the campaign permission to look at their facebook friend lists and in an instant they had a way to see the hidden young voters. the campaign manager explained

how it worked with an interview with politico on tuesday. >> we said here are five friends of yours we think are undecided in this race. click here to send them a piece of viral content or a fact sheet and click here to ask them to support the president. and sounds like a really easy concept. it is not. it is really hard to do and took us a year of some amazing work of our talented technology team to figure out how to do it but we were able to contact over 5 million people directly through their facebook world and people they knew, so they were going to look at their friend and look at it because they know that person. >> in the end more than 600,000 supporters made more than 5 million contacts through the system. 5 million. now that the election is over, the question is what will happen with jim messina. he explains what he thinks will happen next.

>> people just spent five years winning two presidential elections together. they're now not going to walk away and not help them become the change they want to see. >> so is it possible that an obama organization and obama for america will remain in chicago as an entity? >> i think anything is possible. >> anything is possible. joining me, karen finney, and michael shearer, white house correspondent for "time" magazine. i very much like the term cellular shadow. i want to ask you, great reporting on the obama campaign's digital game, but whenever i see this after an election i wonder how much of it is kind of whiz bang tech hype. democrats won a senate race in north dakota they shouldn't have won and it was not the obama campaign's ground game. how big an effect too do you think it had in the end. >> $600 million was raised on line and 504 came through digital operations. that is like twice what george w. bush was spending in the

general election just a few years ago. so there is no doubt it had a huge impact. you can't disconnect what they did in get out the vote from the data operation and what they did in tv advertising from the data operation, it was all wrapped into one thing. these people will tell you tech does not win elections. you need a candidate. you need a message. it makes campaigning that much more efficient. there was a lot of talk they were going to reshape politics and continue on into governing mode and began to dissipate. what do you think is possible this time around? what do you think they learned and what can they do? >> there were a lot of questions in the intermedial aftermath and a lot of democrats were very worried they would use the database against them and they didn't actually.

i think because there was so much anxiety this time, i hope they do, it is a very powerful data and michael makes an important point and something we saw and learned from dean's campaign in 2007 and 2008 and the beauty of technology what they figured out is how to do the most simple effective thing and that is person to person contact. that is still the one thing that people believe above everything else is a friend or person that they know saying you should check this guy out. you should vote for this guy. it is so powerful, hopefully they will use it as a tool to push through the rest of the agenda and not be so shy about it this time. >> one of the things people say is that the obama campaign had and democrats in general have a built-in advantage because a lot of the new ideas and how to work with big data and how to figure out what actually works when you're campaigning is coming out of social science and for a variety of reasons they have a better relationship with ak dem athan the republicans do. do you think that is right and will persist? >> i think it is right to an extent. the advantage obama had is more

he was the incumbent and had two years to do this where as mitt romney who actually broke some ground in his governor's race, you know, a decade ago, doing data searching and things like that. >> in fairness, this is kind of a beefed up version of what they did in 2008. they understood that the way to win was to expand the electorate and the only way to expand the electorate, you have to register new voters and find the voters and turn them out and they used technology to do that more effective will i and efficiently and this is that concept on steroids. >> the secret is out of the bag. you can buy this stuff next time around. the question is whether you have a candidate who can tailor his campaign or her campaign to this type of campaigning which is really mitt romney didn't do it and john mccain couldn't do it and barack obama is very good. >> remember all of this whining, we copied. everybody originally copied carl rove, the 72-hour strategy. if you're a engine drinker we know how you will vote and what magazines you read. the republicans did have the

technology. we copied them. we did a lot better and as you say we had better relationships to make it go the farther distance. there is no reason they could not do this. they chose not to. >> does this lead to a new class of political consultants coming up? i wonder if the next set won't be karl rove but some compile from google who truly knows how to run the source code. >> absolutely. i am sure there are many people out there right now pitching congressional campaigns who are saying we got to get us one of those, you know, google guys. >> when i was in chicago talking to the senior aids about this stuff, they said that jim and the tv people at the obama campaign hated this stuff because they don't get to make their own decisions anymore or the money off of it. >> that's a different issue. they can negotiate their pay but the decisions of where the ads are bought and how much you're going to target, what cable show and everything like that, no longer made by wise men and smokey rooms. it is made by data. >> we'll leave it there.

karen finney, michael cherrer, thank you for joining us tonight. >> what purpose to reform the filibuster if you're not going to get the part that is tying washington up in knots ahead? mitt romney was obsessed with the number 47 before the election. now the number has rather poetically come back to haunt him. ♪ (announcer) when subaru owners look in the mirror, they see more than themselves. so we celebrate our year-end with the "share the love" event. get a great deal on a new subaru and 250 dollars goes to your choice of five charities. by the end of this, our fifth year, our total can reach almost 25 million dollars. it's a nice reflection on us all. now through january 2nd. stop! stop! stop! come back here! humans -- we are beautifully imperfect creatures living in an imperfect world.

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i am about to tell you why mr. smith goes to washington is

not the perfect way to describe what is wrong with american politics. that is next. later, further proof our theory that all the republicans that hate chris christie right now will be begging him to run for president about one year or so from today. stick around. can i help you?

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friday until two p.m. all right, sir, i will have to speak to the people from right here. the wild horses aren't going to drag me off this floor until the people have heard everything i got to say even if it takes all winter. half of official washington is here to see democracy's final show, the right to talk your head off and the american privilege of free speech and most dramatic form. >> you saw a clip from rapidly becoming my least favorite political movie of all time, mr. smith goes to washington. it is not that it is a bad movie. it is a great movie, a classic. it is a bad guide to what is wrong with american politics today. everybody plays the movie for you. i think by law you have to play it where they talk about the fill buster and they see that's what we don't have anymore, talking filibusters.

we need senators take the floor and talk and talk and p.e. e into a bottle and talk and fall down and read the phone book and now senate democrats are considering something huge. they are considering trying to change the filibuster using 51 votes in the beginning of next session of congress rather than the two-thirds vote often thought to be required to change senate rules. if they do this, it is going to be like setting a bomb off. republicans will go nuts. no one said change particularly overdue change is easy. democrats are at the moment thinking of detonating that bomb in service of something that doesn't really matter. making the filibuster more like what you see in mr. smith goes to washington. look at this chart. filibusters used to be relatively rare, particularly mr. smith's day. there were nor filibusters between 2009 and 2010, two years, than there were in the 1950s and 1960s and 1970s

combined. do you want to know how fair the filibuster was? a strategy memo written calculated that in the new senate, the one after the '64 election, medicare would pass with 55 votes, 55. the filibuster did not even figure into lbj's planning. that all changed in recent decades. now everything gets filibustered, big things like health care reform are filibustered and small things like who gets to be nominated ambassador or sit on the national labor relations board. the problem with the filibuster in one sentence is it made the senate into something it was never intended to be, a place that requires a super majority to get anything, anything at all no matter how small or necessary done. defenders of the filibuster tend to say it is about minority rights or the constitution's preference for making hard to get anything done, and it is

important to know that that is not true. yes, the founding fathers wanted to make governing hard. it is why they divided power among three branchs and it is why senators used to be directly appointed by state legislatures and why the house, the senate, and the president have staggered elections. usually you need a big win in two or monday consecutive elections in order for a party to secure control of congress and the white house. the founders didn't want it to be this hard. they didn't make the filibuster. they considered requiring a super majority in congress and rejected that idea. writing in the federalist papers alexander hamilton said, quote, it is real operation is to embarrass the administration, to destroy the energy of government, and to substitute the pleasure of an insignificant turbulent or corrupt hunta to the regular deliberations and decisions of a respectable majority.

does any of that sound familiar, kind of like what we have been seeing in recent years maybe? the founders by the way also opposed political parties. they didn't want them. they couldn't have foreseen how highly disciplined parties would subvert and remake the system they designed and use rules like the filibuster that didn't even, exist back then to what is the line, destroy the energy of government and substitute the pleasure, ka pris to the regular decisions of the respectable majority. i love alexander hamilton. forcing senators to talk when the filibuster doesn't do anything about that problem, and that means it doesn't do anything about the central problem that keeps real majority from governing today. we can't have a political system in which even when the american people vote twice in a row to give one party the power to pursue its agenda, the minority is still able to make them fail. that is a system in which democratic accountability not to mention the ability to govern

effectively breaks down. it is a system in which voters think they gave power to somebody to make the country better, to enact an agenda and when that party, be it republican or democrat isn't able to get the job done, they think that party failed them and they become that much more disillusioned even though it was minority obstruction that kept bills from passing. look, i would like to see both parties end the filibuster cooperatively and now would be a good time to do it. we have divided government. it won't mean one party or the other suddenly gets to ram the whole agenda through at once. the first step towards having a reasonable reform no matter how it comes about, no matter what rules you use is recognizing what the actual problem is and the problem is not that senators don't get enough time to talk. it is that they get too much power to obstruct. join me are two of the finest congressional scholars alive today, thomas mann, senior fellow at the brookings institution and norm ornstein, scholar ae american enterprise

institute and authors of it's even worse than it looks, how the american solution collided with the new politics of extremism. thank you for ip joining me the day before thanksgiving. >> delighted. >> howe did that happen? >> it started changing actually earlier in the late '50s and early '60s as business picked up and there was much to be done and the senate didn't have the luxury of sitting back and enjoying a single senator or group of senators trying to filibuster, so they set up a two-track system and so on and its escalated dramatically in recent years. basically the minority has decided that it is the route to making the president of the other party a failure.

either by defeating out right or by slowing down or by discrediting anything he tries to do, so it is the root of the filibuster, norms no longer operate to restrain the behavior. in the late '60s, maybe 10% of all serious legislation was subject to some kind of filibuster related delay. now it is 90%, 95%. >> it is constant. norm, so then explain this to me. you have a better sense and i don't know your position on this. maybe you agree with it. what is the appeal of the talking filibuster? what problem are we fixing? >> i am very happy to try and move the pressure onto the minority, and talking filibuster might make a difference in a handful of cases. the problem is the one the chart points out and tom emphasized. it is twofold. the first is it is no longer an

isolated individual, a mr. smith. it is a party strategy and if you have got 40 people or more who are willing to talk and all you have to do is stay at it for five minutes and then hand it off to somebody else, it doesn't solve the problem. it is also that it has been used in everything now. the rule hasn't changed since 1975. it is the practice in the last few years. there are ways to deal with it more effectively. the big problem now with filibusters in blocking them is it takes the majority. what i would like to do is say never mind the talking, you have to constantly come up with 41 votes, you being the minority. >> the minority. >> remember, we had this absurd situation where they had to drag 92-year-old robert byrd out of his hospital bed to come to the floor to provide the 60th vote. make them do it. you also have to do more. you you have to make sure the routine uses can't be applied and take up so much time. the way a filibuster now works,

if you apply to something that passes unanimously and ultimately does, you get 30 hours where you don't have to go on the floor soaking up more floor time. cut that out. >> trying to end the filibuster takes hours and hours and hours and that brings me to one other change that changed is harry reid says he wants to do something about the filibuster. isn't what i want to do. it feels to me like a tectonic shift saying we need to change this, it has gone too far. >> it really is. harry reid has long defended the perogatives of the senate and of the filibuster even in the face of criticism from his own members, but virtually all of his members now want to do something and he has been infuriated by the way in which mitch mcconnell has carried out, but if you think about t it is a very odd time to do this. the house is under the control. >> you don't get that much.

>> of the republicans, so it is not as if the filibuster is the only thing standing in the way of democratic program and as norm said, at the beginning of this new congress president obama has a better shot at working with the senate including 6, 8, 10, republicans in using that to put pressure on the house so is this the right time to blow up the senate? >> norm, real quick, do you think we need 67 or 51, whatever you want to do? what do you think is the number of senators? >> institutionally you could do it with 51. you made the key point. in 197 5z when they changed the rule they started to do it this way and stepped back and reached a bipartisan compromise. if you're going to jam something through and there are a million other ways the senators can bol luxe up the works, you better do it with something really sweeping. if you do a half or third of the way measure and inflame the entire senate you're probably not doing it the right way. >> thank you both for being here

this evening. i appreciate it. >> thanks. >> coming up, 47% gets the last laugh on mitt romney and on star trek. hools... ... what should we invest in? maybe new buildings? what about updated equipment? they can help, but recent research shows... ... nothing transforms schools like investing in advanced teacher education. let's build a strong foundation. let's invest in our teachers so they can inspire our students. let's solve this. well, if itmr. margin?margin. don't be modest, bob. you found a better way to pack a bowling ball. that was ups. and who called ups? you did, bob. i just asked a question. it takes a long time to pack a bowling ball. the last guy pitched more ball packers. but you... you consulted ups. you found a better way. that's logistics. that's margin. find out what else ups knows. i'll do that. you're on a roll.

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we have to issue a correction to something we said last night in a segment on new

jersey governor chris christie. we said that christie is seeking re-election in 2014. 2014 is when the second term would hypothetically begin. the gubernatorial election occurs 12 months from now in november 2013. we regret the error. and another thing actually about last night in that segment. i argued that it was smart of governor christie to embrace president obama during the hurricane sandy relief effort despite how much it angered republicans and i said that because in order for governor christie to seriously contend for the republicans presidential nomination in 2016 he has to win the re-election in 2013 in a blue state first, a state so blue it voted for president obama by a 17-point margin. the only problem with that segment was i didn't have any proof that governor christie's obama embrace actually played well with the new jersey voters. we knew it played with new york city voters, a full 89% approved

of governor christie's performance but new york city as anyone who lives there would be so happy to tell you is not new jersey. so i hope you enjoyed the segment, but to be honest, it was a bit of guesswork on our part, a theory, a hypothesis. if i were to give it a grade, it would have to be incomplete. tonight i can complete at least part of that segment. today a national research poll of new jersey voters found christie's approval is at a record high. governor christie's approval rating between 50 and 59% for three years in office. national research said. now 77% of new jersey voters approve of governor christie. that's a 21-point increase from a poll conducted a month ago. 94% approve of governor christie's handling of the hurricane sandy recovery effort. 91% of the approve of the way the governor and president obama worked together in the aftermath of the storm, and that poll by the way not alone.

a rutgers poll that came out found christie's favorability at 67%. up 19 percentage points, 19 since october. and christie is getting great press from one of the largest newspapers in the u.s., one that is usually a little rough on him. the editors of the "new york times" write today we have previously been critical of some of mr. christie's shortsighted actions as governor, but it was hard not to admire him for standing up to his party's worst elements and putting his state first. so tonight we come to the same conclusion we did last night. if governor christie wins re-election big and he might now, republicans who are mad at him today will be begging him to run for president only now we have proof showing that is likelier than ever. coming up, mitt romney had a hunch about the number 47 and he got it wrong. set your phasers on irony. if you are one of the millions of men

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if you're a fan of star trek and who isn't, you might notice that the number 47 is everywhere. like everywhere. everywhere. >> the experience of 47 individual medical officers. >> may i request you activate monitor input 47. >> the infuser will keep him alive for another 47 minutes. >> distance 547 meters. >> we believe we have just discovered the 247th. >> 1 minute 47 seconds a different memory pattern appeared. >> how many do we have left in reserve in. >> 47. >> locate captain janeway. >> captain janeway is stored in memory block 47 alpha. >> that youtube video by the way goes on for another eight minutes. it is really long. the number 47 appears in almost every episode of star trek the next generation. it appears in almost every

episode of star trek deep space 9 and voyager and enterprise and the reason is a guy named joe monoski, a write other star trek and before that he was a student at pomona college in california, and pomona college has a thing for the number 47. they believe the number 47 holds the secret to the universe. they love it. they put it everywhere. they look for it everywhere. they see it everywhere. pomona magazine, the official magazine of pomona college wrote, quote, you might call oh money ae's link to the deep structure of the un years. the organ case has 47 pipes or the traditional motto, our tribute to christian civilization has 47 characters. did you know that at the time of pomona's first graduating class in 1984 there were 47 students enrolled and if you want to go deeper into the mystery, did you notice the last two digits equal 47 times 2?

the article goes on like that for another 2,000 words. you know who else thought the number 47 kind of explained it all? >> 47% of the people who vote for the president obama no matter what. 47% who are with him who are satisfied with government and believe they are victims and government has the responsibility to care for them and believe that they're entitled to health care, food, housing, to you name it. these are people who pay no income tax, 47% of americans pay no income tax. so my job is not to worry about those people. >> mitt romney's famous comments on the 47% raise two questions. how can he say that? how can he say a single mom working two yobs and taking advantage of the child tax credit and a senior that worked all of his life and enjoying the years of his life that he paid into how can he say they refuse to take responsibility for their lives? the other question was what the

hell did he mean? romney said the 47% likely to vote for obama were the same 47% who didn't pay federal income taxes and are the same 47% who are dependent on government? that's not even a little bit true, not a little. a lot of the folks who don't pay federal income taxes are seniors, the most republican leaning age group in the country and there is no 47% in the country that refuses to take responsibility for their lives. they just don't exist. romney wasn't all wrong. the number 47% really did hold the key to this election. it was not the number of people who vote for obama. or the number of people that don't take responsibility for their lives or don't pay income taxes, it was in an act of cosmic poetry the number of people who will end up voting for mitt romney in the 2012 election. dave wasoer man, an analyst at the cook political report has been crunching the final votes from the election and as of tonight romney is down to